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2:45 PM ET, May 20, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Jesusdiaz / Gizmodo:
iPhone 3G Launch Date Confirmed  —  We all suspected it, but now it is confirmed: someone very, very close to the 3G iPhone launch has told me that Apple will announce their new model at the WWDC Keynote on June 9th.  The second-generation iPhone will be available worldwide right after the launch …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Netflix Roku: Free Is Such A Beautiful Word  —  Netflix made a big splash today with their announcement of a $100 set top box, built by a California startup called Roku, that streams free movies (for Netflix subscribers) to the living room.  —  Good for them.
Discussion: CrunchGear, BetaNews and PSFK
RELATED:
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:   Apple vs. Netflix: How do they stack up?
John P. Falcone / CNET News.com:
Look out, Apple TV: The $100 Netflix Player has arrived
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Netflix Unveils Streaming Video Device; Lehman Upgrades
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
First Look: OLPC XO Generation 2.0  —  I am here this morning in Cambridge, Mass., at OLPC's Global Country Workshop.  Opening the conference this morning was OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte, who announced the second generation of the OLPC XO laptop.  —  Negroponte didn't share many details …
RELATED:
Wade Roush / Xconomy:
Negroponte Unveils 2nd Generation OLPC Laptop: It's an E-Book  —  Wade Roush wrote:  —  I'm “live blogging” from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's day-long media event at the MIT Media Lab.  The big news is that OLPC founder Nicholas Negrponte has just unveiled the design …
Discussion: Guardian Unlimited and Slashdot
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y
Discussion: eWEEK.com and Electronista
Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:
A Gamble, but What if He Wins?  —  About a month and a half ago, Carl Icahn and I went to dinner at Tse Yang, an upscale Chinese restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.  Mr. Icahn, the corporate raider turned activist investor, came blustering through the dimly lit restaurant about 20 minutes late …
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Investing legends circle Yahoo; Does a breakup make sense?  —  The Microhoo saga has attracted a who's who list of investors to Yahoo in a big bet that Carl Icahn will force some sort of “shareholder value.”  —  The latest investing star to enter the Microhoo sweepstakes is T. Boone Pickens …
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
How to Make Facebook Useful Again  —  Oh the heels of some of Facebook's missteps (ahem, Beacon) and the proliferation of a myriad of useless, silly, and time-wasting apps, some former Facebook users decided to quit the site for good this year.  However, a handful of early adopter angst doesn't have Facebook worried.
Discussion: Marc's Voice and AppScout
Alex Veiga / Associated Press:
Napster rolls out all-MP3 download store  —  LOS ANGELES - Napster Inc. begins selling MP3s Tuesday, a move the online music service hopes will lure iPod users and turn around Napster's sliding fortunes.  —  The company is the latest to make the switch to the unrestricted file format …
RELATED:
Darren Waters / BBC NEWS | dot.life:
DRM is dead, long live DRM
Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Videos Taken Down From YouTube  —  YouTomb is an interesting project by MIT Free Culture that collects YouTube videos taken down because of copyright infringements.  “More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns.
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Nielsen: MySpace, Club Penguin growth static, LinkedIn soaring  —  The April 2008 iteration of those numbers that Nielsen releases each month about social-networking site activity indicate that growth on News Corp.'s MySpace continues to slow, and that kiddie virtual world Club Penguin …
Peter Sanders / Wall Street Journal:
Fans Resist End of Virtual Disneyland  —  Created to Celebrate 50th Anniversary, Free Game to Shut  —  For Walt Disney Co., the task of opening a virtual version of Disneyland on the Web was relatively easy.  Closing it, though, is proving to be quite a bit more difficult …
Scott Ferguson / eWeek:
HP, Wyse Roll Out Thin-Client Notebooks  —  The next challenge is crafting the VPNs to support taking these devices from the office to a home or on the road.  —  Hewlett-Packard and Wyse Technology, the two leading vendors of thin-client PCs, are attempting to expand their share …
Karl / DSLreports:
Sprint To Impose 5GB Monthly EVDO Cap - 300MB per month when you're off the network...  When comparing Sprint and Verizon's EVDO service, Verizon usually came up short, given their 5GB monthly cap, and terms of service that restricts everything but browsing and e-mail.
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Sen.: Iron Curtain swapped for Virtual Curtain of censorship  —  Yahoo, Google, and Cisco all trekked over to the Senate today to sit for an hour under the grandfatherly, but strangely stern eye of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).  The subject was “Internet freedom,” but this turned out to be code for “censorship in China.”
Discussion: CNET News.com
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Backers Back Aster Data Systems.  It's All About The Clusters.  —  Clusters are the way to go.  Google and Yahoo run their Websites on distributed databases spread across vast clusters of servers.  Now Aster Data Systems, a startup that is coming out of stealth mode today …
 
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 More Items: 
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Panasonic Prices 2008 Flagship PZ850 Line, Demos Viera Cast IPTV
Discussion: Gearlog and Electronista
Matt Asay / CNET News.com:
Apple and MySpace win at Microsoft's expense
Discussion: O'Reilly Radar and Slashdot
Ryan Naraine / Zero Day:
Are you wary of the insider on the outside?
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft's $300 million makeover
Jonathan M. Gitlin / Ars Technica:
Modeling the effects of climate change using Google Earth
Zach Epstein / The Boy Genius Report:
AT&T Launching Free WiFi for Laptop Connect; All Smartphones Later in 2008
Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:
Bubble Alert: Facebook Traffic Declines 10% in April
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Memo to Mark Zuckerberg: The Chicken or the Egg (or the Golden Ticket)
 Earlier Items: 
Amy Schatz / Wall Street Journal:
Exclusive Phone Deals Assailed
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
IAC Acquires GirlSense.com Parent StarNet; Targeting Tweens
Reuters:
T-Mobile to keep iPhone exclusivity in Germany
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch UK:
BBC's Sound Index is good, but we won't get the data
Discussion: BBC NEWS, TechCrunch and PSFK
Tim Leberecht / CNET News.com:
Mobile IM to surpass SMS?
Richard Ford / Times of London:
‘Big Brother’ database for phones and e-mails
Simson Garfinkel / Technology Review:
Alarming Open-Source Security Holes